Emotional honesty vs complaining

“Do not complain,” the preacher said this morning, “have a positive attitude. Complaining brings you nothing.” She told how she was complaining often to God and to a friend about her boss at work, and she was not making progress. Finally her friend encouraged her to stop complaining and to trust God, which she did. Her boss noticed her changed attitude and asked what was different.

As I listened, I thought of a question. When is emotional honesty with God complaining? I looked again at her text, from Philippians 2. “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation.” The verb “do” impresses me. I can be emotionally honest, pour out my heart to God and express my frustrations and distress, then arise from my prayers and go do what I have to do in the situation I have to do this in without complaining to anyone else.

I also thought how in Psalm 22, David begins with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But he moves on to “You are enthroned as the Holy One, you are the praise of Israel.” David pours out his heart, but does not contemplate only his distress, but reminds himself who God is. Another thing to remember is to be thankful. We may be in distress, let us acknowledge to God that we are distressed, but let us also remember to give thanks for what he has given us. Is the stressful circumstance the only thing in our lives? No, there are many good gifts as well. But the complaining spirit ignores the good gifts, and sees only the one thing that is painful or lacking.

I think we can even give thanks for the problems and stresses in our lives. God works in all things for good, even though not all things are good. Paul says in Ephesians to give thanks for all things (Ephesians 5:20). Jesus gave thanks even a short hour before his arrest.

My beautiful situation

I remember the words of an old praise song, "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion on the sides of the North, the city of the Great King." This comes from Psalm 48 in the King James version.

I'm thinking the hilltop or mountain where Jerusalem sits really isn't that spectacular, what the Psalmist celebrates is what the mountain represents, the fact that God chose to make his name dwell in the heart of the nation of Israel.

I celebrated this morning the situation where God has made his name dwell in my life. Outwardly a mediocre situation. There are stories of people who maintain faith in incredible adversity, and stories of people who are abundantly  blessed, my story would be neither of those. But yet I perceive a glory in this mediocrity, and I celebrate that God has chosen to dwell with me in these circumstances. Oh beautiful the situation where God has placed me, because it is God who has placed me here, and abides with me in it.

A dull morning

Drab and dreary, I grumble. But I looked again. Indeed there is the glory of light behind the fog; the delicate tracery of branches against the light.

Lord, may I ever be aware of your glory, even veiled and hidden as it may be today.

Prayer -- we can't know what will happen

Sometimes we pray and God lays on us the thing we really wanted or needed, or lifts away the thing we wanted to get rid of. This is what we usually mean when we say "God answered my prayer."

But God doesn't always do this. Sometimes I pray and the circumstances don't change but I find myself calmer, at peace with the situation. This too is an answer to prayer.

And sometimes too, I pray, the circumstances I prayed about don't change, and how I feel about those circumstances doesn't change either. This is when prayer feels most unanswered. But maybe the answer is "trust and wait."

But let me not base my strategy of prayer, or my desire to pray, on thinking one and only one of these three things is the norm. Paul Miller presented this issue in the first chapter of A Praying Life. He's camping with his daughter, and she tells him she's lost her contact lens. He looks at the ground covered with leaves and twigs and says "lets pray." His daughter says "what good will that do," in despair because her prayers for her autistic sister to speak had not been answered. Paul prayed silently "Lord, this would be a good time to come through," then prayed aloud to find the lost lens, and then they saw it, sitting on top of a leaf.

Paul and his daughter saw God respond by revealing the missing contact, showing them he could and would answer some prayers with a quick fix, even though in the situation with the autistic daughter, he was not doing so.

Whatever your circumstances are, the important thing: God is with you

Read a good online devotional this morning:

Now here's what I want you to remember today, my friend. Whatever your circumstances are, those circumstances are not nearly as important to you as the fact that God is with you. So if like Joseph, you're going through some tough times today, remember that before we learn about the tough times, we learn that God is with us.

This comes from Woodrow Krull at gotandem.com. The complete message is here: He's looking at Genesis 39, how after being sold into slavery, Joseph prospered as Potiphar's slave, only to later be arrested when Potiphar's wife lusts for him and he refused her.
The point is we cannot think of circumstances as the indicator whether God cares -- when we learn that God cares whatever the circumstances, we can find good things where we are, just as Joseph enjoyed a time of near prosperity while enslaved.

Thank you God for assurance in the night

Lord,

Last night in my twilit thoughts you blessed me.
I cannot now remember what I was thinking as I lay there awake but not fully lucid,
But I do know I felt assured that you have arranged things in great detail, and you are fully in control, so I thank you.

So often those twilit moments of not sleeping, yet not lucid lead me to worry or confusion. But last night they led me to confidence and trust.

Shadow of the past

Wednesday began badly. I stumbled over the remnant of an old emotional conflict, like an unexploded World War I shell found in a Flanders field. Why is my heart still divided over this? Hadn't I learned this lesson long before? I committed my heart to God, but still grumbled in my soul that I was so ready for this old thing to be just a memory. 

Then that evening I had a discussion with a friend about prayer and about emotional honesty. The sting of feeling stuck in the old conflict lifted. I remembered that in my conflicts, whether old or new, God is with me.